Re: [Caml-list] Package installation assumptions made by odb

[Edgar Friendly <thelema314@gmail.com>]

On 02/13/2012 06:01 AM, Arnaud Spiwack wrote:
> I see an immediate problem with packages that install several executable
> files (for instance, Melt provides a library and a collection of tools,
> none of them named melt, by the way). I haven't spent time looking more
> than superficially into oasis or odb yet, but it strikes me as a
> possibly important limitation.
>

It looks like the executable is now named melt-build.  In this case, odb 
would expect the melt project name to be "melt-build" so that its simple 
logic can detect if melt is already installed.  This does not have any 
affect beyond changing the name that must be typed on the command line 
to install melt (`odb melt-build` instead of `odb melt`), and the name 
for dependencies by other projects (projects depending on melt would 
have to specify `dep=melt-build` instead of `dep=melt`).

Also, if melt installs an ocamlfind library named melt, then its odb 
package name could be melt or melt-build, depending on which part of 
melt should be used to detect its installation.  At the moment, odb 
doesn't really do version handling (mainly because it's difficult to get 
a version number from an executable), although this is a weakness where 
odb might improve.

This assumption of executables and libraries being named the same as the 
package isn't critical to the design of odb, it's just a simplifying 
assumption that works quite well (and would work for melt up to the last 
version when its executable was renamed).  If there's good reason to 
have more complex installed-program detection, this is easily doable, 
but the workarounds are simple enough at the moment that this doesn't 
seem to be a problem.

E.